Americans may be in a state of gloom about the economy, but it’s still a beautiful day in the neighborhood, if you live next door to Sheik Majed Al-Sabah.
Majed, founder of chic luxury retail chain Villa Moda, is the man the New York Times dubbed “The Sheik of Chic.” The nephew of the Emir of Kuwait, Majed was in Miami this week to launch his latest venture, Al Sabah Art & Design Collection, during Art Basel Miami. The gallery will officially open in March in Dubai.
Lounging on a chair upholstered in a pastiche of native Middle Eastern fabrics on the sidewalk outside his gallery in Miami’s Design District, the Sheik says his business is booming. “We sold out our first gallery of merchandise and had to restock,” says, offering me and other passersby dates, pastries, and tea. “People come from the fair where a chair is $45,000 and our chair is $7000. So the price is right.”
The gallery is selling a variety of works that combine modern design with indigenous Middle Eastern crafts. Hudi Baroudi and Maria Hibri are two Lebanese designers who scavenged a variety of mid-century modern pieces that had been discarded following the Lebanese Civil War, and then reupholstered them in vintage embroidered fabrics from the Middle East.
The gallery also features the work of Dutch designer Pieke Bergmans, who took antique furniture embellished with traditional Syrian mother of pearl and hand blew crystal shapes onto it, for a weirdly parasitic look.
For those preferring to wear their Middle Eastern art, Sheik Majed is showing the work of Dubai-based graphic artist Nadine Kanso, who creates gold jewelry in the shape of the letters of the Arabic alphabet -- a sort of Arabic bling a rapper might wear. Sheik Majed says the jewelry has been wildly popular with Miami customers, who have been commissioning necklaces with their own letter.
But while he wants to move his merch, the Sheik says he is sensitive to our economic pain. “I don’t want to come here in an arrogant way,” he says. “I could jack up my prices, and say, ‘This is design. Take it or leave it,’ but no. I want to touch the hearts of everyone. We respect people. We respect their budgets. We’re not selling at big margins. We want to break even. It’s all about the launch. Later we can do more extensive projects and ask for a higher price.”
As we were munching our dates, Dutch design guru Li Edelkoort wandered in, to a warm welcome from the Sheik. Edelkoort, who recently announced her retirement as head of the prestigious Design Academy Eindhoven, is planning that school’s first international branch in Dubai, in league with the Sheik.
“Our dream is to have young talented people in our own region,” Sheik Majed says. “But first we need to have the educational infrastructure.”
Feeling guilty about ordering that $14 capiranha while headlines trumpet economic collapse in every quarter? Morgans Hotel Group has a message for you: “F&%k the Recession!”
That’s the sentiment adorning the back of the bartenders’ T-shirts at the posh new Mondrian here in South Beach. The front of the shirt urges guests to forget the collapse in retail sales, the burgeoning foreclosure figures, the potential demise of the Big Three automakers: “RecessIsOn” they say.
It’s a campaign that New York branding consultancy Ito Partnership concocted for the hotel chain as a way of dealing with the dissonance travelers might feel about booking themselves into a hotel known for the chandeliers in its showers instead of a monk-like Motel 6.
“The strategy behind “RecessIsOn” for Morgans is: 1. Keep our cool (maintain the vibe and image that our guests expect) and 2. Give our guests permission to enjoy the brand, even in negative economic times,” says Ito Partnership’s CEO, David Melancon, at a party celebrating the Mondrian’s opening during Art Basel Miami.
“The first phase was about instantly connecting with customers by verbalizing the pungent, slightly off-color thought that we all have: F#*k the Recession. We did that through guerilla media tactics (video projections, wild postings and some other outdoor media.” Morgans had wanted to buy print space, but couldn't find a way to do that would sufficiently convey their feisty sentiment in a family-friendly way.
They also launched a YouTube channel -- RecessIsOn -- that has a short video with images of caviar and people flipping the bird alternating with screens trumpeting, “Attitude is Everything” and “F$%#k the Recession.”
Ito has asked various celebrities to talk about “what they want to tell the recession” and will continue to post their responses as they come in. One filmed with Shepard Fairey, the artist who created Obama’s HOPE portrait, in Miami will go up on the site later in the day.
Guests who are enthusiastic about the campaign can buy their own “F%$#k the Recession” t-shirts at vending machines in the Mondrian’s lobby. But one guy sporting a shirt was annoyed with his purchase. “It says “F&^%k the recession” on the back,” he says, “but it’s in gray, not white. You can hardly see it. It’s way too subtle!”
This is what Art Basel Miami looks like: it's Wednesday night at the Mondrian, the city's hottest new hotel, and a crowd is gathering for the official opening party -- a cocktail soiree toasting Marcel Wanders, the hotel's designer.
The place is in virtual lockdown. If you're not on the official list or a guest of the hotel, forget trying to crash the place. Security guards patrol the perimeter of the pool. Another is stationed blocking the elevator buttons. No pushing those unless you can show a key. NB, Mumbai.
But folks inside are having a merry time -- the weird sort of revelry that occurs every December when a pastiche of celebrities and hangers-on get together to party in the name of art. Mind you, many of these folks wouldn't know Donald Judd from Naomi Judd, but whatever. It's a tony excuse to drink mojitos wear slutty clothes.
At Asia de Cuba, the hotel's Chino-Latino restaurant, A-Rod sits at a table by the window, trying valiantly to scarf down some grub as young women in stiletto heels and skimpy dresses keep finding an excuse to saunter over and introduce themselves. That's when he's not being hassled by jock sniffers, who just want to shake his hand, and what? Congratulate him on a fine season? Or on bagging Madonna?
Back in a booth in a corner, Ivana Trump, in a very pink pantsuit, and her signature blonde beehive (now looking very Sarah Palin-ish), is dining with luxury mag mogul Jason Binn, and her new hubby, Rossano Rubicondi. She's a little chubbier than in her days with The Donald, and her eyes are starting to take on that Bride of Wildenstein look.
The David Lynchian moment is when Marilyn Manson, looking revoltingly creepy -- with his whitened face, greasy hair, and flaccid body -- strolls over with his skinny Gothish girlfriend to say hello. Did Ivana even know who he was? Did she care enough to stop eating lobster mashed potatoes to say hello? Did she know what she was doing when she posed, with Manson, his beanpole chick, and Binn? Who knows? But she gamely linked arms with the Celebrity Deathmatch dude and mugged for a friend's camera.
All night, people who had nothing in common but fame, kept meeting and greeting each other, like old pals, relieved, no doubt, at finding other bold face names in the room. Whew. Right party, right time.
Or maybe they were just swapping notes on how to negotiate a discount on a Warhol, Hirst or Basquiat. Call it the Art of the Deal.
Michael Burke, CEO of Fendi, has one bit of advice for those who feel squeamish about shelling out for pricey furs as the rest of the country goes into foreclosure: just buy better stuff.
"People should buy for the long term," he told me at a dinner honoring Nadja Swarovski, the Austrian crystal queen, during Art Basel Miami.
Think, he said, of the ad campaign for pricey watchmaker Patek Phillippe: "You never actually own a Patek Phillippe. You only look after it for the next generation."
In other words, stop buying the trendy crap you might have wasted your money on when Lehman Brothers was trading at $67 a share -- and then handed off to Housing Works Thrift Shop at the end of the season -- and upgrade to the classics that will endure.
Burke said he wasn’t feeling the recession much. Sure, the marginal walk-in buyers -- presumably flush with cash from flipping condos in Vegas -- have vanished. But good riddance. "The people who shouldn’t have been buying are gone but the carriage trade remains," he confided.
Still, he has sympathy for his less fortunate peers, like poor Mark Lee, former CEO of Gucci. Mark fought them about putting up that ill-timed 46,000 square foot store on Fifth Avenue, he said. "But he lost." Lee announced he was leaving Gucci in September "to spend more time in New York." Gucci insisted Lee’s leaving had nothing to do with the luxury goods purveyors’ flat sales for the first half of 2008.
But those blingy Gucci "it" bags filling that vast space now look distressingly like remnants of the Bear Stearns era. Fendi baguette, anyone?
The lunch started badly. A waiter spilled a glass of red wine down the back of Dutch design guru Li Edelkoort’s black silk caftan. She was not amused, and stormed out on the balcony with her plate of sesame noodles to dry off in the sun.
David LaChappelle strolled in wearing a trucker’s hat and found a seat in the back. Benjamin Noriega Ortiz, who designed the Mondrian in L.A., and is in the process of designing the new one going up in Soho, dashed in just as the grilled chicken was being passed. Yves Behar grabbed one of the few remaining seats to make it a full house.
The occasion: a luncheon celebrating the opening of the Miami Beach Mondrian, the first ‘real’ hotel created by Dutch designer Marcel Wanders (if you don’t count his little Lute Suites in Amsterdam.) “I did it because they were the first people to ask me to design a hotel,” he volunteered, when asked “Why Morgans, why Miami?”
The opening, which was rushed a bit to coincide with this year’s Art Basel Miami, showed small signs of its hasty debut. There were no hair dryers or bathrobes in the rooms, much to the chagrin of Morgans’s CEO Fred Kleisner (“They just arrived, and hadn’t been unpacked yet,” he said, with the shrug of an experienced hotelier. “They promised me they’d be in the rooms tomorrow.”)
For his part, Wanders was trying hard to be chill. “Just remember to tell people it’s not done yet,” he told me before the two of us launched into our post-lunch Q&A, the ‘entertainment’ portion of the event. The lollipop-like sculptures in the bar, which were supposed to be black, he said, were white. Curtains were billowing where there was supposed to be a view. The trees in the dense little labyrinth in front were still saplings. “People tell me it takes a year before you get all the kinks out,” Robin Brevers, Wanders’s business manager confided. “We told them we’d be coming back to make sure it was all done right.”
For his part, Kleisner was giddy with the project. So giddy, in fact, that he virtually offered the job of creating new Morgans hotels in Dubai, Amsterdam, and Toronto to Wanders on the spot.
“We brought this one in close to budget,” he crowed. “If we can keep our powder dry and continue to get financing, we’ll come out of this [recession] ahead of the competition. We’ll be one of the survivors when others are falling by the wayside.”
Meanwhile, Wanders, who had “poured his heart” into his next design for Morgans’s -- a brand new hotel in Las Vegas -- is chagrined that that project has been put on indefinite hold because of the devastating effects of the downtown on gamblers’ pocketbooks. Is he willing to risk doing the same for other Morgans projects? Maybe if those lollipops are back in the black.
I guess it takes getting out of New York, and a reprieve from constantly watching CNBC to make you realize that not all the world is fixated on the Dow.
Miami, of course, is one of the centers of the subprime mayhem, but last night, at the opening of Design/Miami 2008, revelers were partying like it was 1929.
At the opening vernissage, for the event’s toniest collectors and design groupies, women in fur stoles and python pants stolled among Humberto and Fernando Campana’s wacky chairs, sipping champagne compliments of the event’s sponsors, Audi and HSBC – a car company and a bank that evidently are flush enough to still underwrite such posh events without inciting shareholder rebellion.
The Campana brothers, the hottest thing to come out of Brazil since Gisele Bundchen, are famous for their chairs made of teddy bears, flip flops and old tires. They are this year’s Designers of the Year.
Ambra Medda, Design/Miami’s founder, said this year’s event was more organized and “civilized” than past year’s, in part due to its new location in a temporary structure in the design district and partly because of longer hours. But mostly, she told us, it’s because the event has matured, learned from past years’ glitches, and hired enough staff to stage the thing properly. Asked if she was ready now to branch out to other regions, she sighed. “I’m thinking how nice it would be to take up knitting.” Maybe the glam life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be after all.
Marcel Wanders talked about the fairy tale that informed the design of the new Mondrian Hotel in Miami, and the fear he has to face down every time he begins a new project. John Maeda spoke of design's hidden return on investment -- its impact on an organization's human resources.
The occasion was Fast Company's Masters of Design gala, where Wanders and Maeda, both 2008 winners, held forth on the challenges and opportunities for design both in good times - and in rotten ones.
Listen in as they talk about Sleeping Beauty in South Beach, why digital design is often so unsatisfying, and the granny whose dying words to her granddaughter were, "F**k fear!"
With a week to go until the election, and the markets still bouncing around like an elephant on a trampoline voters are desperate for our next president -- whomever he may be -- to outline a plan to save the U.S. from becoming the next Venezuela.
The 10 Commandments for the President Elect is an urgent plea to our next commander in chief to take immediate action -- in his first 30 days in office -- or risk triggering an irreversible economic collapse that could take decades to undo.
Among Enriquez’s suggestions:
1. Cut back the military by 3% per year for ten years.
2. Cap medical costs at 18% of GNP.
3. Take a cold, hard look at entitlements, including asking people who are 55 to 60 to work two more years, and those under 55 to work three more years.
4. Triage support for companies: do not try and save dying whales.
Enriquez conceded that many of his ideas will be wildly unpopular with both Democrats and Republicans. But, he says, the alternative is too dire to be either gentle or partisan.
That said, he recognized that others may have better ideas. To that end, he’s opening his manifesto to the broader community and asking for ideas, edits, clarifications, and suggestions. In short, he’s willing to open source his document in order to make it better.
To enable the collaboration, Pop!Tech has launched a wiki as a forum for a vigorous, non-partisan debate. You don’t have to have been at Pop!Tech to contribute.
In addition, the Pop!Tech is rallying the community to insist that elected officials speak to Americans about our current crisis as responsible adults. Your comments are welcome here.
In 1989, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman wrote this about Venezuela: “Despite the extensive press coverage of the Venezuelan story in recent weeks, few of the stories have pointed out a key fact: Venezuela is by far the least deserving of the debtor countries. No other country has borrowed so much money to such little purpose; no other nation is as completely a victim of its own policies. Venezuela's ruling elite has grossly mismanaged the economy, creating a completely unnecessary debt crisis. But however unnecessary the economic crisis may be, it is still real.”
Sound familiar? Now’s the time to act, or risk having future economists write about our own ‘lost decade.’
Matt Mason, author of The Pirates’ Dilemma, spoke at Pop!Tech this morning about what we can learn from pirates.
1. If you want to beat pirates, copy them. If pirates are adding values to your customers, it’s an example of market failure. Look at it as an opportunity to learn and do better.
2. Good business is the best art. Quoting Andy Warhol, Mason notes that the way we rebel as a society has changed. The way we kill bad ideas is to change them. Music industry: take note.
3. The art of storytelling is changing because of abundance. Today, it’s about letting people be part of the conversation, and letting them tell stories themselves.
4. Never let the legal department ruin a good remix without talking to marketing first. When their legal teams kill YouTube video mash-ups of your product, they’re doing you more harm than good.
5. Abundance is better than advertising. When Novartis started giving their leukemia drug away to poor people in Thailand, they not only thwarted the pirates, they got a rep as a socially responsible company -- advertising they could never have managed to afford.
6. Some good experiences will always be scarce. Hollywood claims it’s being ravaged by pirates, but they’ve had several blockbuster summers. The experience in the theater is not the same as on TV, and people will still pay for that difference if it’s good enough.
7. In an economy based on abundance, your business model needs to be a virtuous circle. “Heroes,” one of most pirated tv shows on web, now has revenue streams -- from itunes to publishing, to integrated ads, to t-shirts -- that reinforce each other.
Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail, spoke this morning at Pop!Tech about non-monetary economics -- a cheery idea, given the current state of monetary economics.
Non-monetary economics, he says, are things like reputation and attention -- valuable properties, but traditionally hard to quantify. That is, until Google came along.
“Google measures somebody’s reputational assets, turns it into a page rank, and determines search traffic,” says Anderson. That traffic can then be converted to money. Think of the conversion this way: Links to page rank to search to traffic to ads to money. Like currency conversion rates in international banking, the conversion rate for reputation is now getting quite formal.
“We now have a central banker for the internet economy,” Anderson says. “Larry page is the Ben Bernake of the Google economy, since he controls page rank.”
There are limits, Anderson says. “Larry Page can’t convene a summit of internet bankers to set conversion rates.” Even when Google tried to institute a “No follow tag” -- an attempt to deflate link currency by stopping spammers, it was only about as successful as Bernake’s infusion of funds has been to stabilizing the market
Right now, Anderson says, “Larry is more like a European national central banker giving over his currency to the EU.”
